Pandora might be the least exciting of the major streaming music services, in part because it doesn’t offer on-demand music playback or a robust premium monthly subscription service. That, however, didn’t stop the decade-old music company from beating all of its competitors last month.

Pandora founder Tim Westergren tells VentureBeat why the company’s new artist analytics platform is one of the most “centrally important” additions to Pandora since the music service launched nearly a decade ago.

There is plenty of money to be made in radio advertising, but most of it is tied up in terrestrial (aka traditional) radio stations rather than digital music services. A large part of that has to do with digital services having no standards for how to measure local audience metrics.

Google finally released its Google Play Music app for iOS today, with unlimited songs, custom radio stations, no skip limits, smart recommendations based on the music you like and listen too, and more.

The biggest setback to Google’s streaming media stick Chromecast is the sparse selection of available applications, which until now hasn’t included any third-party music services. (You could, however, access Google Play Music All Access as well as listen to playlists of music videos on YouTube.)

App Annie released its May apps index this morning– all apps minus games — and the giants are doing well: Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook are well-represented on the top publisher lists. But there’s also some surprises, and some new entrants to the most-downloaded and highest-grossing app leader lists on iOS and Google Play.

By itself, Google accounts for 56 percent of all global mobile ad revenues. Social giant Facebook takes a much smaller chunk with 13 percent. But together, they own the lion’s share of mobile ad dollars.

Pandora’s new Facebook integration adds a helpful social layer to the streaming music service that may help assure investors that Pandora is moving forward, despite a grim business outlook ahead of tomorrow’s Q1 FY2014 earnings report.